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A year of global “round-the-clock” conferences

A year of global “round-the-clock” conferences

—

by

Prince Verma
in

During the Covid pandemics when we were all stuck at our homes, the new format of events emerged, which virtually travel the globe with the sun from East to West. The International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) and Alma Mater Europaea university organized the first such event on July 3-4, 2020, calling it a “unique round-the-clock and round-the-globe” event featuring 52 speakers from 28 countries. Within months, the traveling virtual conferences became widespread.

During the Covid pandemics when we were all stuck at our homes, the new format of events emerged, which virtually travel the globe with the sun from East to West. The International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) and Alma Mater Europaea university organized the first such event on July 3-4, 2020, calling it a “unique round-the-clock and round-the-globe” event featuring 52 speakers from 28 countries. Within months, the traveling virtual conferences became widespread. Alma Mater Europaea university and the IACL organized the first conference that traveled through time zones around the globe in pandemics. Jurij Toplak, professor of law at the Alma Mater Europaea, explained how he invented this conference type: “During Spring 2020, everyone was canceling their meetings. Our event was scheduled to take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and we decided to take it online. With 52 presenters from all continents, we were struggling to set up panels while at the same time not forcing presenters to talk in the middle of the night.” In April 2020, he decided to design panels depending on the speakers’ time zones. Toplak, who teaches as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School in New York and co-chairs the Freedom of Speech research group within the global constitutional law association, also managed and moderated the event on Zoom. The event was a huge success and was marked as the first large international legal conference since the beginning of the pandemic, and it featured leading scholars including Harvard professor Mark Tushnet, Oxford professor Jacob Rowbottom, the Facebook and Instagram’s Oversight Board member and former European Court of Human Right’s vice president András Sajó, David Erdos of Cambridge University, and many others. law professors and presenters Elisa Bertolini, Jurij Toplak, Orhan Konuralp, Aysen Konuralp, and Max Steuer during the first round-the-globe conference on July 3, 2020. The first around-the-clock virtual conference became an inspiration. Soon after, many organizers carried out virtual events that run through time zones around the globe. Experts stress that this conference format enables huge events, and people will not be separated due to geographical barriers. For example, one organization organized a multiple-location, semi-virtual event with hubs on four continents (Europe, North America, South America, Australia) and 600 active participants. Every talk was live-streamed to YouTube. The 24-hour program ran for five days, with normal working hours at each hub. Another organization that will host a massive round-the-world virtual conference is SaaStr Annual. It is the largest SaaS conference in the world where more than 50,000 SaaS executives, employees, VCs, and founders come together. The conference is going to take place during the month of September and will feature speakers like Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications, and Jean-Michel Lemieux, the Chief Technology Officer of Shopify. The event will happen virtually with over 200 live sessions. Any academic conference can leave a lot of carbon footprint in multiple ways and can be costly. Hosting conferences virtually has caused them to be environment-friendly and has drastically reduced the overall costs of both the hosts and attendees. When in early 2020 other organizers cancelled their international due to pandemics, the free Speech in the 21st Century conference technical team took the event with 52 speakers from 28 countries online. Photos show technical team staff when they were setting up the studio and setting up panels based on the presenters' time zones. Global online conferences piqued the interest of people and have become a subject of scholarly research. Three researchers of the University of Graz, Austria, calculated how much emissions are saved by online conferences. These researchers developed the round-the-globe conferences further by proposing a model of a “multi-location semi-virtual conference” in which the conference has several hubs on different continents, carried out in physical locations and featuring some presenters, and other presenters and attendees join online. Alma Mater Europaea university, which includes a leading physical therapy school in the region, organized another major online event in March 2021. Organized by the Alma Mater Europaea’s president Ludvik Toplak, the event featured the European Commissioner for Education Maria Gabriel and famous economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. In 2004, when Jurij Toplak was a teaching assistant at the University of Maribor, he organized the first transatlantic online conference for law students in Slovenia. “We hosted Professor Daniel Lowenstein of UCLA Law School and Professor Rich Hasen of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. About 300 students watched the event in three lecture halls, and it was a truly unique experience for all of us. The United States Embassy delegation attended. We transmitted the video over the phone line, which made the event expensive,” remembers Toplak. It is almost a year since the International Association of Constitutional Law event was hosted. It showed everyone that even though we are separated due to this ongoing crisis, we can still come together to present, discuss, and share our knowledge. That is why it is important that we make sure that the very first global academic conference is not forgotten.
Alma Mater Europaea university and the IACL organized the first conference that traveled through time zones around the globe in pandemics. Jurij Toplak, professor of law at the Alma Mater Europaea, explained how he invented this conference type: “During Spring 2020, everyone was canceling their meetings. Our event was scheduled to take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and we decided to take it online. With 52 presenters from all continents, we were struggling to set up panels while at the same time not forcing presenters to talk in the middle of the night.”

In April 2020, he decided to design panels depending on the speakers’ time zones. Toplak, who teaches as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School in New York and co-chairs the Freedom of Speech research group within the global constitutional law association, also managed and moderated the event on Zoom.

 The event was a huge success and was marked as the first large international legal conference since the beginning of the pandemic, and it featured leading scholars including Harvard professor Mark Tushnet, Oxford professor Jacob Rowbottom, the Facebook and Instagram’s Oversight Board member and former European Court of Human Right’s vice president András Sajó, David Erdos of Cambridge University, and many others.

A year of global “round-the-clock” conferences
Law professors and presenters Elisa Bertolini, Jurij Toplak, Orhan Konuralp, Aysen Konuralp, and Max Steuer during the first round-the-globe conference on July 3, 2020.

 

The first around-the-clock virtual conference became an inspiration. Soon after, many organizers carried out virtual events that run through time zones around the globe. Experts stress that this conference format enables huge events, and people will not be separated due to geographical barriers. 

For example, one organization organized a multiple-location, semi-virtual event with hubs on four continents (Europe, North America, South America, Australia) and 600 active participants. Every talk was live-streamed to YouTube. The 24-hour program ran for five days, with normal working hours at each hub. 

Another organization that will host a massive round-the-world virtual conference is SaaStr Annual. It is the largest SaaS conference in the world where more than 50,000 SaaS executives, employees, VCs, and founders come together.

The conference is going to take place during the month of September and will feature speakers like Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications, and Jean-Michel Lemieux, the Chief Technology Officer of Shopify. The event will happen virtually with over 200 live sessions.

Any academic conference can leave a lot of carbon footprint in multiple ways and can be costly. Hosting conferences virtually has caused them to be environment-friendly and has drastically reduced the overall costs of both the hosts and attendees.

A year of global “round-the-clock” conferences
When in early 2020 other organizers canceled their international due to pandemics, the free Speech in the 21st Century conference technical team took the event with 52 speakers from 28 countries online.

Photos show technical team staff when they were setting up the studio and setting up panels based on the presenters’ time zones.

Global online conferences piqued the interest of people and have become a subject of scholarly research. Three researchers of the University of Graz, Austria, calculated how much emissions are saved by online conferences. 

These researchers developed the round-the-globe conferences further by proposing a model of a “multi-location semi-virtual conference” in which the conference has several hubs on different continents, carried out in physical locations and featuring some presenters, and other presenters and attendees join online.

Alma Mater Europaea university, which includes a leading physical therapy school in the region, organized another major online event in March 2021. Organized by the Alma Mater Europaea’s president Ludvik Toplak, the event featured the European Commissioner for Education Maria Gabriel and famous economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.

In 2004, when Jurij Toplak was a teaching assistant at the University of Maribor, he organized the first transatlantic online conference for law students in Slovenia. “We hosted Professor Daniel Lowenstein of UCLA Law School and Professor Rich Hasen of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. About 300 students watched the event in three lecture halls, and it was a truly unique experience for all of us. The United States Embassy delegation attended. We transmitted the video over the phone line, which made the event expensive,” remembers Toplak.

It is almost a year since the International Association of Constitutional Law event was hosted. It showed everyone that even though we are separated due to this ongoing crisis, we can still come together to present, discuss, and share our knowledge. That is why it is important that we make sure that the very first global academic conference is not forgotten.

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